Having nothing else to work with, Sata and Mati clamped their claws over Boro’s deep wounds, but had little success stopping the bleeding. Sata’s eyes swirled with fear and grief, and she tried to say something, but couldn’t make words come out.
Boro raised his head a little. “I . . . didn’t do a very good job . . . getting to the meeting place . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mati assured her friend. “None of us are very good reptiles, and this whole thing is all my fault . . .” she said, breaking into shaking sobs.
Rini left the dead female child with her friends, wrapped his mind around Mati’s, and took over trying to stop Boro’s bleeding.
“I . . . don’t want to . . . stay here,” Boro muttered between gasps. “Help me . . . get to the . . . insect caves.”
As Boro struggled to stand, Rini and Sata took his weight as best they could, each keeping one claw on the worst wounds, those inflicted by tail spikes.
Mati, Rini spoke to her silently, you’ll have to carry the child. They’re afraid to touch her.
Mati blinked to clear her mind, gathered the lifeless child into her arms, and with eleven young reptiles trailing behind, followed Boro and his helpers across the sand in the twilight.
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Tapping into his deepest reserves of determination, when Boro arrived at the nearly-dark mountainside riddled with small caves, he didn’t crawl into one of them as his friends had expected, but instead started climbing.
Rini and Sata had kept the blood loss to a small trickle until then, but when Boro started climbing, they were hard pressed to stay at his side, much less keep the bleeding under control. As he climbed, the rocks under his feet quickly turned red.
With a roar of relief, he came to the first of the small caves, much higher up, that were not used for grub harvesting. The first entrance was too small for him, so he reached down inside himself for one more burst of strength, somehow found it, and staggered to the next cave, nearly collapsing into the opening. After several long minutes of effort, with his friends powerless to help, Boro managed to drag himself inside so others could enter and again try to tend his wounds.
Feeling the need to keep a watch, Mati remained outside as the eleven young reptiles entered silently.
He’s breathing easier, Rini reported to Mati from inside the small cave, but is very weak, barely conscious most of the time, and won’t be going another step in this reptile body.
Mati was about to tell Rini that all was well outside, when she spotted the shadowy silhouette of an adult reptile creeping up the rocks toward their hiding place.
Rini, inside the cave doing everything he could to stop Boro’s bleeding and make him comfortable, immediately knew what Mati saw. He whispered the situation to Sata and the eleven young lizards. The eleven quickly scampered
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out and lined up on both sides of Mati to look down and see who was coming.
The shadowy figure continued to advance, hopping from rock to rock on the mountainside. When it got to a certain point, about a stone’s throw away, all eleven youth hissed in unison. Mati added her reptilian voice to the chorus.
When the warning faded away, a lone female voice floated up to them. “I just want to talk. There are others who also want you to help us, but they are afraid to come. May I approach? Please?”
The young ones looked at Mati.
“Yes!” she hissed in a no-nonsense voice full of warning.
The adult female, with her heart in her throat, slowly climbed the rocks until she perched just one boulder below the line of watchers. The swirling anger in their eyes told her they were quite willing to tear her apart.
“I am a member of the Guard,” she began timidly, “and have been through the Rip in the universe, although I understood little of what I saw. I was cornered and had to fight, but a strong mammal grabbed me and held me, without hurting me, until the fight drained out of me. I knew, as he held me, that I could never understand that place, and I had best go home. The next thing I knew, I was home.”
Mati smiled to herself, knowing who she was talking about. In the cave, Rini smiled also.
“Please, we are a simple people, and our pride keeps us from understanding many things, but we shudder at the thought of seeing the last egg hatch, the last female fail to go into heat because of the fear in her heart, the last male grow old without finding a mate. Please, if you can, help us to find our home . . .”
Mati became choked with emotion as she listened to the female lizard. She had to swallow several times before she could speak. “As my friend revealed earlier today, we came here to do just that. We have eaten grubs and cactus fruit with you, tended mushrooms, and raided insect nests. We have asked questions, and listened to every story you could tell us about your people, your old home, and what makes you happy. But . . . I have to admit . . . we have completely failed. Many new homes have been offered to your people, and in each you shrivel and die, even faster than here in this . . . small temporary
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home. We have no idea why. I am sorry.”
“But . . .” the lone female whined with desperation, “have you not dreamed of our home, as we do every night? You slept in the same cavern with us. Did you not glimpse, in your sleep, what we see all the time? We do not know what to call it . . .”
The female stopped talking. Suddenly the blue female’s mouth hung open, the slender gray male behind her bounced with excitement, and the green female poked her head through the cave entrance.
“Yes!” Mati said as soon as she found her voice.
“That explains it!” Rini added from behind.
Mati turned to Sata, who still wore a puzzled look. “They aren’t desert reptiles!”
Sata smiled with realization. “Of course! I’ve been dreaming about jungles ever since we arrived!”
“Jun . . . gles?” the female of the Guard tried to say, not recognizing the word.
Mati turned back to the visitor. “My friend was just doing her best to say a word from our language. Jungles are very wet, warm, and green.”
“Yes!
That’s our home!”
Deep Learning Notes
What leadership qualities do we see in Mati when Boro finally finds a cave?
What qualities do dreams have that made it hard for Mati, Sata, Rini, and Boro to realize they were seeing the solution to the mission every night?
Even without the dreams, what can be seen by any observer that suggests the lizards probably weren’t desert reptiles?
